Frankenstein's Monster (5 page)

“For an Austrian, sir.” Lucio shrugged. “For a blind Venetian beggar it is business.”

“And do you have business to transact?”

“A blind beggar is easy to ignore. People often reveal too much in my presence.”

During this exchange my limbs tugged at me to run. The captain wore a brace of pistols. I too easily imagined him ripping away my hood to see if I was the deserter, imagined him shooting me once he had looked upon my pieced-together face. If I were not killed instantly and managed to slip away, he would follow the trail of blood. He would find Mirabella.

I could not bear the thought of losing her. It has been just a few days since she agreed to stay, yet her ease with me grows by the hour. Only this morning she excitedly led me to one of the windows, a place I avoid for fear of being seen. There she showed me, in the early dawn, a lone flower growing out of the stone wall, its single bud unfurling in the sun. She is like that flower, blooming in impossible circumstances, her caution and reserve slowly dissolving. If I only had light to offer her and not the darkness of hiding …

And so, when the captain questioned us, I could not help crying out, “We have nothing to tell you!”

Lucio turned in my direction, surprised at my outburst.

“But we would if we could, sir,” he added.

“Your accent,” the captain said, suspicious. “You’re not Venetian. Who are you?”

“You must excuse my friend,” Lucio said before I could answer. He reached out to pat me, missing my arm by several inches. “He’s had the fever all week.”

Immediately the captain faltered backward and spat in disgust.

“You beggars are worse than the rats in this dirty city,” he said. “I don’t want to see you in the courtyard again.”

Lucio nodded, smiling, until I told him the captain had left.

“That was a very stupid thing to do,” he said, the smile dropping from his face. He felt on the ground for his few belongings and began to bundle them up.

“Don’t leave.”

He could not know how I felt. I had spent my life avoiding attention. Now, when I needed most to be invisible, I had marked myself—and Lucio with me.

“Tomorrow you should find a place of your own to beg, my friend.”

A reply choked in my throat. I have stayed nowhere as long as this, nor ever made myself so open and vulnerable. Lucio’s companionship has been a miracle, more words said to me this past week than in ten years, and said kindly. But he would be done with me.

Hours have passed since the incident. I sit now in the campanile, writing this entry in my journal. Mirabella is at my side dozing, her head resting on my arm. While a woman’s continued presence is more than I ever dared believe possible, Mirabella’s silence makes me yearn for the talkative little beggar that much more strongly. If he only knew why I had spoken rashly …

Lucio has a wife and child. He is not immune to sentiment. He will understand.

I shall go this minute to explain. He has given me directions many times in anticipation of the supper we will share. I will tell him about Mirabella, then tomorrow we shall find a new corner to beg from—together.

My father was right. I am a vile thing, a mockery of all that is human.

At last, after threading back and forth through alleys and across canals, I found where Lucio lives—in the remains of one of the many buildings destroyed by Bonaparte. I could not tell if it had once been a church or a palace, because only three run-down walls of a little inner chamber stood amid rubble. For a roof, a dozen planks had been laid across the uneven walls, and a tarpaulin over those. More tarpaulin was attached at the front to serve as a door. Now it was rolled up, showing Lucio toward the rear of the hut. Next to him sat a thin, pale woman holding a sleeping baby.

At the entrance, visible through the open flap, burned a low fire, inviting me in to share Lucio’s fellowship. I paused, wondering what to say, how much to reveal. Had I not paused, none of what followed would have happened, but I did: I stopped to listen, to witness what I had no right to see.

I crept closer. However dismal their home, it worked a sort of charm on me. My eyes drank it in greedily, and I strained to hear every word of quiet conversation that passed between husband and wife.

“What a lovely day,” Lucio began. “Today the winds were sweet. I could smell Rome and Florence in the air.” He had said as much this morning; it was more poignant said to his wife, representing all the places he could not take her. He reached forward into what was only blackness for him and waited. “I smelled Paris and London. Saint Petersburg, too.”

His wife caught his hand, brushed her cheek with it, then folded it back into his lap.

“Speaking of foreign places, we were out when the ships docked,” she said.

“Oh no,” he chided. “That’s too far. Didn’t carrying the baby tire you?”

“I had to try. After all, the Austrians have brought at least one good thing with them—rich, curious tourists.” She laid the child down by the back wall, returned to sit by her husband, and began to undo her bun, removing one after another mysteriously placed pin till her hair fell loose and she shook it out. It cascaded in brown waves that caught red glints from the firelight. What a transformation! The curls softened her sharp features, and she became as lovely as any woman I have ever seen.

“And?” Lucio asked, turning his face toward her voice. “Did any passengers have bad luck today and lose their purse?”

She laughed easily, a deep throaty sound that made me realize how little laughter I have heard in my life.

“Their luck was better than mine. I had taken just a stickpin when someone started grabbing Venetians and questioning them.”

Lucio sighed. “The Austrians are looking for a deserter.”

“No, the man was a passenger from the ship. A priest, I think. He had that look to him, although he didn’t wear a cassock. Anyway he made the crowd too wary. By then, the baby needed nursing.”

“Such a good mother,” Lucio cooed.

His searching hand found her, tugged at her to lie down on the straw, and began to unbutton her dress. She in turn loosened his clothes as well. She moved with delicacy: not one thread of the flimsy scraps was pulled. Lacing her fingers in the hair of his chest, she kissed her husband hard till she at last broke away, breathless.

“Let me pull down the flap,” she panted.

“No one is there.”

“Someone may come.” Half-undressed, she hurried to
the entrance as I moved round to the side. She peered into the darkness for a long time.

“Hurry,” Lucio complained.

After she lowered the flap, I crept round the corner to the back. Several bricks had fallen loose, creating a hole a few feet from the ground. I looked inside. Lucio and his wife lay tangled on the straw right next to where I knelt. The glow of the dying fire hid the dirt and bruises of their poverty. To me, they were angels suffused with divine light. At that moment, I still could have left. I still could have prevented what happened.

I did not. I was transfixed by their joined bodies and wanted what they had.

The starving man hungers for even the sight of bread.

I have never known love. I have never felt a caress on my scarred cheek nor the sweet pressure of willing lips on my blackened mouth. I have never had a moment when I did not burn with the consciousness of how ugly I am.… No, not just ugly. Even an ugly man can have a wife or lover. He can raise children, make friends, inspire respect, and die contented in his bed.

There came a moment—should I say, of course?—when Lucio’s wife turned her face upward and, as the ecstasy of spending abated, opened her eyes. I had pulled away my hood, the better to look through the narrow hole, the better to memorize each pearl of perspiration, each roselike stain on her face and breasts. I meant no harm. I only wanted to see.

Shock and horror and fear passed over her beautiful features; despair, too, as if she suddenly realized that she had brought an innocent babe into a world that held the likes of me; and something more, a primal hatred of all that is alien.
This hatred lashed out and seared my body through the bricks.

Her mouth opened wide. There came from it a harsh choking sound, then she at last found her voice. In her wild tormented scream, I heard the cries of everyone who had ever rejected me.

Thrusting my arm through the hole, knocking bricks out of the way, I seized her by the throat. Her body jerked like a puppet’s, and she gasped repeatedly. Lucio beseeched her to tell him what was wrong. Tenderly he felt her struggling body for injury. Shock evident in his face, he touched first a huge arm, then a huge hand at his wife’s neck. He shouted and struck at me, trying to break my grip.

Feeling the woman grow limp, I dropped her onto her husband. At once his arms encircled her. As she weakly coughed, he pulled her behind him for safety, bits of straw clinging to his sweaty skinny body. In that moment, my pathetic longings were replaced by rage, and I hated him. His nakedness revealed him as what the nobles saw: a parasite, a blight upon society. His wife was no better, yet she had screamed at the sight of
me
.

What other ruinous mischief might I cause them? My eyes found the baby, swaddled in rags, lying in the back corner. I could rob them of their child and present it to Mirabella; thus might we live—monster, mute, and kidnapped babe—in a grotesque parody of life.

Sensing where the danger next threatened, the woman whispered, “Raphael.” Lucio crawled to the back wall, searched for the child, and clutched it to his chest as his blind eyes roamed back and forth.

“The baby is safe,” he said. “What happened? Who was here?”

“A terrible thing like a stone gargoyle come alive,” she whispered hoarsely, weeping.

Unable to listen further, I left. Mirabella was asleep when I returned.

When I woke this morning, Mirabella was gone. Mindless fury overtook me. I shredded the rags she had used for her pillow, crushed the flowers she had gathered from outside, ground to dust the pottery she had set as decoration. These puny efforts could not drain off my anger, and, with a tremendous grunt, I picked up one of the rusted bells that lay on the floor of the campanile and hurled it. The bell cried out so loudly it hurt my ears as it crashed against the wall.

I had wanted the bell to shatter. I had wanted the campanile
to fall down around me. Frustrated, I whirled around for something else to lay my hands upon.

Mirabella stood in the open doorway.

“Where have you been?” I demanded. The blood throbbed within my hands.

She pointed behind her to a wooden table. It was old, but its top had a pleasant veneer, and although it had but three legs, if lodged against a corner, it would have at least the appearance of stability. She would have had to go out very early to scavenge such a prize from the streets before anyone else.

Her emotionless eyes accomplished what tearing apart my makeshift home had not, and drew off the passion that had overwhelmed all reason. Overcome, I sank to the floor and covered my face with my hands.

“I thought you had left.”

Hand at her throat fingering her scar, she seemed to weigh the circumstances she had left, against those I presented: actual violence, against the potential for a violence beyond measure. Unable to watch these thoughts cross her face, I lowered my eyes. Quick steps hurried back and forth. I thought she was gathering what she could take away with her, then realized she was trying to straighten the mess I had created. After long minutes her footsteps stopped, and I looked up. Tears streaked her pale cheeks and both hands clutched the rags I had scattered about. She gestured at me with these clenched fists: it was useless for her to clean up, useless for her to stay, and useless, too, for her to leave.

This morning the food and water were gone, and I needed to go out and beg.

Before I left, I told Mirabella that I wanted her to remain with me, but that if she decided to leave, I would not force her to come back. Unlike that first time, I did not spy on her to learn her decision.

I could not return to the palace courtyard or to the Piazzetta. Though there was nothing to connect me with the monster at Lucio’s window, I could not bear to hear from him the description of myself that by now must have spread to half of Venice. Instead, I begged aimlessly throughout different streets, wandering till I found a corner I could claim as my own. It was well suited, situated beneath a crumbling facade of gargoyles—what Lucio’s wife had called me—just one more Venetian grotesque.

I sat in silence, my cup at my feet. I refused to speak or to lift my cloaked head, even though several times I was stared at for longer than usual. My silent image must have been pitiful enough because I soon had sufficient coins. I bought bread and hurried back to the campanile.

Mirabella had stayed.

Tonight Mirabella unpinned her hair and shook it loose. It may be something she has done every night since I rescued her; tonight I seemed to see it for the very first time. When I realized what she was about to do, I had her sit before the low fire, just as Lucio’s wife had sat.

Mirabella’s hair caught the glow of the flames and crowned her with burnished gold. Using her fingers as a comb, she spread the hair like a fine veil across her face, then shook it back over her shoulders. Her clothes tightened around the swell of her breasts, the slimness of her waist, as over and over she combed her hair, shaking it back. The movement
was both innocent and full of calculated art, and invited my thoughts where they had not been encouraged before.